Jim Miller on Politics

Pseudo-Random Thoughts

Worth Reading: Fouad Ajami's take on
Lebanon. I found these two
paragraphs especially significant.

But Nasrallah was in the end just the Lebanese face of Hezbollah. Those who know the workings of
the movement with intimacy believe that operational control is in the hands of Iranian agents, that
Hezbollah is fully subservient to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The hope that Hezbollah would
"go Lebanese," and "go local," was thus set aside. At any rate, Nasrallah and his lieutenants did
not trust the new Lebanon to make the ample room that a country at war--and within the orbit of
Syria--had hitherto made for them in the time of disorder. Though the Shiites had risen in
Lebanon, there remains in them a great deal of brittleness, a sense of social inadequacy relative to the
more privileged communities in the country.

That raid into Israel, the capture of the two Israeli soldiers, was a deliberate attack against the new
Lebanon. That the crisis would play out when the mighty of the G-8 were assembled in Russia was a
good indication of Iran's role in this turn of events. Hassan Nasrallah had waded beyond his
depth: The moment of his glory would mark what is destined to be a setback of consequence for him and for
his foot soldiers. Iran's needs had trumped Hezbollah's more strictly Lebanese agenda.

After A War, the amount of physical damage doesn't matter much, but straight
borders do. So says Austan Goolsbee.

First:

The negligible long-term impact of war itself is rather startling but has been noted in numerous
studies. The recent work of two economists at the University of California, Berkeley — Edward
Miguel and Gérard Roland — for example, "The Long Run Impact of Bombing Vietnam,"
. . . , starts from the fact that
some 10 percent of the 584 districts in Vietnam received nearly three-quarters of the total bomb
tonnage. No matter how they sliced the data, they did not find that heavier bombing during the war
corresponded with any major differences in poverty rates, access to electricity, literacy, population
density or consumption in the 1990's and 2000's.

Similar studies have documented that the long-run population of Japanese cities was not affected by whether
they were destroyed in World War II (including Hiroshima and Nagasaki, whose destruction was radioactive,
to boot) and likewise for cities in Europe. After suffering the enormous immediate costs of war,
it seems that people rather quickly return to where they left off. In the long run, things return
to normal. Nation-building is still possible, even if one starts with rubble.

Second:

In a new study, three economists — Alberto F. Alesina and Janina Matuszeski of Harvard University
and William Easterly of New York University — document how important internal cohesion is for the
health of a society.

Their study, "Artificial States," . . .
creates two measures of how "artificial" a nation's boundaries are. The first measures whether
the country's political borders partition ethnic groups into separate countries. A country that
combines a few Hutus and neighbors another country with lots of Hutus is in greater danger of ethnic
fragmentation than a country made up of similar peoples.

The second measures how squiggly the borders of a country are. Straight lines are usually the sign
of an arbitrary colonial mapmaker. Natural barriers like rivers and mountains seldom look
tidy. Taking the measures of partitioning and neat borders, their study compares the performance
of countries with natural borders to those with artificial ones and finds, overwhelmingly, that artificial
nations suffer terribly — lower income, horribly ineffective and corrupt governments, less respect
for the law, low literacy, limited access to clean water, poor health care, you name it.

The first finding will not surprise anyone who has read Mancur Olson's The Rise and Decline of Nations.
In fact, Olson argued that being destroyed in a war was often an advantage because a nation could start
fresh, without all the barnacles that special interests had added over the years.

Nor would the second finding surprise anyone who has learned from
Edmund Burke, especially from his writings on
the French Revolution. Simplifying greatly, we could say that Burke believed that nations must
adapt to new conditions, but that those adaptions should be based on the historical precedents as well
as abstract principles — or arbitrary boundary lines.

That said, it is worth adding that there is a very large nation — the United States — that has
many straight boundaries, both internally and externally. We had one great civil war (and avoided
others earlier in our history), but have since been at peace internally. I don't want to get
Professor Goolsbee in trouble with his colleagues, but perhaps there is something they could learn from
the American experience. Or, if that is too radical an idea, from the Swiss experience. The
Swiss are divided by language and religion.
They even fought a small civil war in 1848, but since then have somehow managed to stay at peace with
each other.

(For an amusing example of how irregular boundaries can also lead to war, or almost to war, see this
account of the "Pig War".)

The ploy is simple. Suppose someone is discoursing at length on another country, showing their
apparent expertise. You wish to get one up on them, but don't know the country well. You do
that by waiting for them to make a generalization about the country and then saying quietly: "But not in
the south." By making this small "correction", you appear to be even better informed than the
expert.

The ploy works — most of the time — because regional differences are nearly universal.
And the south is a good region to choose because, in countries that extend very far from north to south,
climate differences will produce differences in ways of living and, in time, in politics between the
south and the rest of the country.

In other words, we should expect every nation above a certain size to have regional differences in
politics — even if the nation has a homogenous population. And I hasten to add that I do
not know of any substantial nation that has a homogenous population.

(If you haven't read it already, you'll want to look at Lexington Green's post for some examples of
those regional differences. I had not known, for example, that the southern part of Brazil tried
to secede in the 1930s.

Have I ever used any of Potter's ploys? Not often, but I did experiment with them in games years
go, and I have used some of his ploys in conversations when I was seriously annoyed.)

The leaders of all the major political parties in Sweden will be answering questions at the Swedish
Mission Covenant Church in Köpingsvik on the Baltic Sea island. The political discussion is
set to be interspersed with prayers and hymns. The congregation will be composed of the party
faithful and the Christian faithful, and is expected to number between 600 and 2,000.

The tradition of the Köpingsvik church debate started 38 years ago, and the event has been held in
the run-up to every election since then.

The 45-60 minute question time is always broken off to sing the party leaders' favourite hymns.

I'd love to see what hymns American politicians chose at a similar event.

(In contrast, a Florida Democratic politician sending his son-in-law to meet with the
Christian Family Coalition in Miami makes some Democrats
positively nervous.
And journalist Dan K. Thomasson believes that religious people
may be seen in politics, but should not be heard.)

Hezbollah Is A Creation Of Iran: So Says Amir Taheri, who knows more than
most about the
Iranian regime.

What are the links between Hezbollah and Iran? In 1982 Iran had almost no influence in Lebanon.
The Lebanese Shi'ite bourgeoisie that had had close ties with Iran when it was ruled by the Shah was
horrified by the advent of the clerics who created an Islamic republic.

Seeking a bridgehead in Lebanon, Iran asked its ambassador to Damascus, Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour, a
radical mullah, to create one. Mohtashamipour decided to open a branch in Lebanon of the
Iranian Hezbollah (the party of God).

After many meetings in Lebanon Mohtashamipour succeeded: in its founding statement it committed itself to
the "creation of an Islamic republic in Lebanon". To this end hundreds of Iranian mullahs,
political "educators" and Islamic Revolutionary Guards were dispatched to Beirut.

Where they created a remarkably successful tool.

Terror has been its principal weapon. Throughout the 1980s Hezbollah kidnapped more than 200 foreign
nationals in Lebanon, most of them Americans or western Europeans (including Terry Waite, the Archbishop
of Canterbury's envoy). It organised the hijacking of civilian aircraft and more or less pioneered
the idea of suicide bombings against American and French targets, killing almost 1,000 people, including
241 US marines in Beirut and 58 French paratroopers.

The campaign produced results. After Hezbollah's attacks, France reduced its support for Saddam
Hussein. America went further by supplying Iran with TOW anti-tank missiles, shipped via Israel,
which helped to tip the Iran-Iraq war in favour of Iran. In exchange Iran ordered Hezbollah to
release French and American hostages.

Once the Iran-Iraq war was over, Tehran found other uses for its Lebanese asset. It purged and
then reshaped Hezbollah to influence the broader course of regional politics while using it to wage a
low-intensity war against Israel.

With that record of success, one can understand why they appear so confident

Whether or not Iran directly controls Hezbollah, as Taheri suggests, it seems almost certain that the Iranian
regime is influential enough to veto major operations by the terrorist organization. Why then
did Iran, at the very least, give Hezbollah the green light to escalate their war with Israel?
Taheri blames Bush, in part.

Why has Tehran decided to play its Lebanese card now? Part of the answer lies in Washington's decision
last May to reverse its policy towards Iran by offering large concessions on its nuclear programme.
Tehran interpreted that as a sign of weakness. Ahmadinejad believes that his strategy to drive
the "infidel" out of the Islamic heartland cannot succeed unless Arabs accept Iran's leadership.

And that requires Iran leading a campaign against Israel. (We made that reversal, in large part,
to satisfy our European allies — whose predictions about the consequences of their policies in
Middle East have not always been correct.)

But if Hezbollah is crushed, then that campaign fails, and Iran loses prestige all through the Arab
world.

Is Taheri's analysis correct? You would have to know more about Hezbollah than I do (or perhaps
anyone outside that organization knows) to answer that question. But his analysis seems more
plausible than most I have seen.

(Taheri has been charged with passing on a false story about Iranian plans for making religious minorities
wear distinctive badges. You can find a short discusion of the controversy in his
Wikipedia biography, and you can read his statement
here. He's sticking to his
story.

You can find more samples of his work — which I always find interesting —
here,
here,
here,
here, and
here.

Finally, here's a contrasting view from a scholar who sympathizes with Hezbollah.)

"Honor" Killings Are A Serious Problem In Britain, according to the
Guardian.

Thousands of young women in Britain are living in fear of the "hidden scourge" of so-called honour killing,
a conference of police, Home Office staff and victim support groups was told yesterday.

An estimated 12 such killings happen in the country every year, but they represent only the extreme end of
a much larger problem of intimidation and abuse.

A small minority of British Asian families deliberately use the threat of violence against supposedly
erring daughters and sisters who defy agreements on suitors and marriage, the meeting in Leeds was
told. A week ago, a London businesswoman's cousin and brother were jailed for life for stabbing her
to death in front of two young nieces, whose own courtship and marriage arrangements might in due course
have been influenced by her independent spirit.

And who commits those honor killings? The Guardian does not care to be specific, but calls them
"Asian". When Americans hear "Asian", we usually think Japanese or Chinese; when Britons hear
"Asian", they usually think Pakistani, or perhaps Indian. But given Asia's size, there are many
more possibilities.

Which Asians does the Guardian mean? The writer, Martin Wainwright, give us a hint when he names
the killers of that London businesswoman, Samaira Nazir. They are her brother, Azhar Nazir, and
her cousin, Imran Mohammed. But their names and Azhar's occupation (greengrocer) are all that
Wainwright tells us about the two men. Maybe I am just too suspicious, but I don't think the two
are practicing Buddhists, and I don't think vegetable sellers are more likely to be murderers than the
average person. If the Guardian knows more about the "Asians" committing honor killings, they
ought to share that knowledge with their readers.

Journalists And Nuclear Power: This meandering
piece
from last Sunday's New York Times shows why it will be difficult to revive the American nuclear
industry.

Consider, for example, this confused paragraph:

For 30 years the debate has been defined by a perfect and almost maddening symmetry, not only in terms
of opinion but also of facts. The answer to whether nuclear power is risky can be framed many
ways, for instance: you can tally the number of injuries and deaths to citizens from U.S. nuclear plants
(zero) or consider the potential number of injuries and deaths in a serious accident (many). Is nuclear
power clean because it doesn't produce carbon? Or is it dirty because it produces radioactive
waste? Is it very expensive? Or are the economics competitive over the long run, especially
if fossil fuels are taxed for warming the planet?

The reporter, Jon Gertner, concedes that there have been zero civilian deaths and injuries from commercial
nuclear power plants in the last half century — but he is unsure whether they are
safe. All right, if zero casualties over a half century doesn't convince him, what would?
(Zero may not be literally true, but the toll is very close to zero, and far lower than the toll from the
main alternative to nuclear power, coal.)

And that's not all that's wrong with the paragraph. It is true that there are tiny amounts of
radioactive waste produced by nuclear power plants. It is also true that there are tiny amounts of
radioactive waste produced by coal plants. And the coal plants produce significant amounts of much
more dangerous substances, particularly heavy metals such as lead. And these substances, unlike
radioactive wastes, do not become less dangerous over time.

And it is true that costs soared for nuclear power plants back in the 1970s. But one reason those
costs soared is that the opponents of nuclear power were able to delay so many of the plants. And
when interest rates jumped, those delays became extraordinarily expensive. The opponents then
began to argue that nuclear power was just too expensive.

You'll find more confusion all through the article. But you will never find something as essential
as a comparison of nuclear power to other sources. As it happens, nuclear power is safer than
most other forms of power generation. (Natural gas may be an exception, though I have not
seen a recent study comparing the two.) And it is not the only form of power generation that might
produce very large accidents. (If that point is obscure, imagine what would happen downstream from
a large hydroelectric dam, if an earthquake (or something else) were to cause it to rupture. And it
is not hard to think of other examples for other forms of power generation.)

Gertner talked to experts who, I am sure, understood these simple points. But, either he didn't pay
attention to their answers, or he didn't ask them the right questions, because those simple facts do not
appear in this long article.

Why didn't he ask the right questions? I am not sure, though I suspect one reason is that he also
interviewed non-experts, or perhaps I should say, anti-experts, from organizations such as Greenpeace
and the Union of Concerned Scientists (which does not require its members to be scientists). And,
as far as I can tell, he took their views seriously. Since their objections to nuclear power
are, more often than not, essentially religious, these anti-experts will object to nuclear power
regardless of the facts.

Unfortunately, this article is all too typical of the coverage of nuclear power. Very few reporters
make that fundamental comparison of nuclear power to other sources. And nearly all of them give
at least some credibility to Greenpeace, the UCS, and other dubious organizations.

(Wondering about the Chernobyl accident? Here's the
Wikipedia article. The number of
deaths was far lower than first feared — by official estimates.

And it is worth mentioning that nuclear power can be made still safer and cheaper. There are
designs, such as the pebble bed
reactors, that appear to have significant advantages in both cost and safety over the current designs.)

Worth Reading: Claudia Rosett, who has owned this story, celebrates
the first conviction in the UN
oil for food scandal.

While the United Nations frames its next response to crisis in the Middle East, its last grand venture in
that region--Oil for Food--has finally resulted in a guilty verdict in open court. Last Thursday,
a high-rolling, globe-trotting South Korean businessman named Tongsun Park was convicted in the Southern
District of New York of conspiracy to launder money and act as an unregistered agent of Saddam Hussein's
Iraq.

Mr. Park's case is much entwined with the executive floor of the U.N. For years, he enjoyed
extraordinary access to its top officials, complete (at least at one stage) with a U.N. grounds
pass. Prosecutors argued that he used this foothold to help Saddam corrupt the 1996-2003 Oil for
Food program from the start, the aim being to undermine the U.N. sanctions and ultimately remove them
altogether. In return, Mr. Park got at least $2.5 million from Iraq, with a promise of millions
more to come.

Rosett deserves a victory lap. She even deserves to say a little about how much she has done
to cover this story, but apparently is too modest to boast.

(By contrast, our other major newspapers, definitely including the New York Times, have shown a lack of
interest in this giant story that is downright distressing.)

Managers Or Computer Models? Sociologist Chris Snijders thinks that
computer models are
better than managers for
many routine tasks.

The professor, Chris Snijders of the Eindhoven University of Technology, has been studying the routine
decisions that managers make and is convinced that computer models, by and large, can do it better.
He even issued a challenge late last year to any company willing to pit its humans against his
computer models.

"As long as you have some history and some quantifiable data from past experiences," Snijders said, a
simple formula will soon outperform a professional's decision-making skills.

"It's not just pie in the sky," Snijders said. "I have the data to support this."

Some of his experiments from the past two years have looked at the results that purchasing managers at
more than 300 organizations got when they placed orders for computer equipment and software.
Computer models given the same tasks consistently achieved better results in categories like timeliness
of delivery, adherence to the budget, accuracy of specifications and compatibility with existing systems.

This finding is consistent with many others.

Snijders's work builds on something researchers have known for decades: that mathematical models
generally make more accurate predictions than humans do. Studies over the years have shown that
models can better predict, for example, the success or failure of a business start-up, the likelihood
of recidivism and parole violation, and performance in graduate school.

They also do better than humans at making various medical diagnoses, picking the winning dogs at the
racetrack and competing in online auctions.

Computer-based decision-making has also grown increasingly popular in credit scoring, the insurance
industry and some corners of Wall Street.

Snijders believes that experience does not, in general, improve managers, that some actually become worse
as they accumulate experience.

I, for one, will welcome our new computer overlords. All right, that was just too much fun not
to include. But if I were to be serious, I would say that these computer models help us perform mental
tasks in much the same way that more familiar machines help us perform physical tasks. You could,
in principle, step through these computer models by yourself, just as you could, in principle, dig a large
mine by yourself. In practice, you will nearly always be better off letting a machine do the
dirty work.

I'll let you decide for yourself whether you want to share this article with a manager.

(One technique commonly used by managers, personal interviews, may be worse than useless.

Other cherished decision aids, like meeting in person and poring over dossiers, are of equally dubious
value when it comes to making more accurate choices, some studies have found, with face-to-face
interviews actually degrading the quality of an eventual decision.

If, like me, you have missed a lot of popular culture, you may want to know the
origin of that line
about welcoming overlords. It was spoken by a journalist.)

"No Ideological Agenda" The New York Observer catches the
New York Times (and other important newspapers)
not covering a big story:

The story had everything: secret agents, political intrigue, personal betrayal and cash. Lots and
lots of cash.

Yet, for all that, a remarkable trial that ended last week in a Manhattan courtroom—a proceeding
that implicated figures in the highest echelons of international politics—was barely mentioned in
the major American press. If it weren't for the journalistic wing of the conservative movement,
outlets like the National Review Online and The New York Sun, it might not have been covered
at all.

Take the events of last Thursday, for example. After two weeks of testimony, a jury took only a
few hours to convict a South Korean national, Tongsun Park, of acting as an unregistered agent of Saddam
Hussein's Iraq. The conspiracy of which he was a part ran for 10 years, ending in late 2002, and
helped one of the world's worst regimes maintain its grip on power.

But The New York Times did not assign a reporter to his trial, its total coverage amounting to a
brief wire report on the day following Mr. Park's conviction. Of the other major national dailies,
The Washington Post ran a single news-brief item, the Los Angeles Times not a word.

Why didn't the New York Times cover this story? They haven't really explained, but one editor
did say this:

The New York Times' foreign editor, Susan Chira, said in an e-mail, "There is absolutely no ideological
agenda about the coverage of the oil-for-food trial."

Absolutely. Right, Ms. Chira. Of course. After all, just how important is corruption
at the United Nations? It is not as if the UN were a golf course that doesn't allow women to be
members.

(There's probably a Gilbert and Sullivan song that would be a perfect reply to Chira,
but I am not familiar enough with their work to think of one off hand.)

A Jordanian who killed two U.S. soldiers last month was fatally wounded in a clash with security forces,
a senior Iraqi official said Tuesday. Diyar Ismail Mahmoud, known as Abu al-Afghani, was identified
as the killer of the two soldiers, National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie told reporters.

The two soldiers' mutilated bodies were found after they were captured in a firefight near Youssifiyah,
southwest of Baghdad.

I only regret that we couldn't have questioned him.

(Although the article doesn't say so, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this success came, directly or
indirectly, from the intelligence we found after the strike on Zarqawi.)

Is This Torture? Here's what sometimes happened to inmates at a well
known American institution:

One of these penalties was the "bootbox"—being shoved, forcibly, doubled up, into a small locker,
and being left there. Another, . . . was "pumping"— [they would] drag him quailing and
shaking to a nearby lavatory, bend him face upward over a trough, and pour basins of water over his face
and down his throat until he went through the sensations of drowning.

The second sounds much like waterboarding.
I have not checked, but I would not be surprised to learn that the the first is forbidden by the Geneva
conventions. And the second has drawn criticism for decades.

They are both, as it happens, routine punishments inflicted on some younger boys at the
Groton prep school while Franklin Delano Roosevelt was
a student there. The punishments were inflicted by the older boys — with the permission of
the faculty. I took that passage from one of the best known biographies of FDR, James MacGregor Burns'
Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox.

Now, were these two treatments torture? Roosevelt didn't think so while he was a student there; in
fact he approved of them heartily. But he may have been wrong. Or standards may have changed,
some might argue, so that what was acceptable in 1896 may be torture in 2006. That's not my view,
since I think standards should be universal, but I can understand why some might make that
argument.

I agree with Roosevelt. In my opinion, the "bootbox" and "pumping" were not torture then and they
would not be torture now — within limits.

But I would also say that the "bootbox" would, at some point, become torture and so would
"pumping". And that illustrates a point I have made before. There is no clear line separating
torture from Groton's hazing or from the aggressive interrogation of terrorists. And what makes
it even worse is that the line is different for different people; a person with claustrophobia would
suffer far more from the "bootbox" than others. And the same is true of other questioning
techniques. The Soviets learned that keeping a man standing would destroy his will quickly, but
some thought will show you that when standing becomes torture would vary with the person.

Nearly all, regardless of their views on how we should conduct the war on terror, would like a clear
line between between torture and aggressive interrogration. Most would prefer that, except perhaps
in a few extreme cases, that we not stoop to torturing our prisoners. Unfortunately, because there
is no clear line between torture and, let us call it duress, those who wish to charge us with torture
will always be able to do so. And those who wish to deny that we torture (except in a few cases
where individuals broke the rules) will always be able to make that claim.

That's unsatisfying, I agree. But if you are troubled by that conclusion and want some way to
escape it, let me put this challenge to you: Try to come up with some clear limits on "bootboxing"
and "pumping" that would be almost universally accepted as not being torture — and that would
apply to nearly everyone. I think that's impossible, but I would be pleased if some one proves me
wrong.

(I should add that, as far as I can tell, our interrogations have not used torture, as it is usually
defined — with, perhaps, some individual exceptions. Others who use different definitions
have come to different conclusions.)

On The Other Side, Literally: There are two remarkable things about this
photograph.
First, the New York Times photographer, Joao Silva, was with the Mahdi army while they were trying
to kill American soldiers. The radical Islamists saw him (and the New York Times) as allies in their
war against the United States. At the very least, the Mahdi army thought that this photographer and
the New York Times were helpful to their cause. And what serious person could disagree with that
conclusion?

Second, was the comment added by the New York Times Assistant Managing Editor for Photography, Michelle
McNally:

A sniper loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr fires towards U.S. positions in the cemetery in Najaf,
Iraq.

Michele McNally: "Right there with the Mahdi army. Incredible courage."

(She means the photographer, of course, not the sniper.)

And that is all she says about the photographer — who is taking a picture of a terrorist in the act
of trying to kill American soldiers.

What kind of person is that morally blind? I can't tell for sure, but I went through the entire
sequence of pictures, found this on-line
Q&A, and came to some
tentative conclusions about her. First, like some others in the arts, McNally is so absorbed by
the esthetics of a picture that she sometimes misses the story completely. The fifth picture in
the sequence shows an Iraqi prisoner with the shadow of an American soldier on him. McNally called
that picture "symbolic, iconic and grudgingly aesthetic". The sixth picture shows Afghans being
taken in for questioning. McNally gives this description: "Theatrical, exquisite framing."
And, disgracefully, she describes the first picture, showing the murdered and mutilated American
contractors in Falluja as "iconic enough to join the ranks of Eddie Adams, Joe Rosenthal
and Nick Ut". (There's a mistake in the caption to the eighth picture, which may be
significant. She says it shows Paris police using water "canons" to disperse a mob. She
means "cannons", of course. It is a mistake someone more concerned with esthetics than
military affairs might naturally make.)

(Are these four pictures any good? The fifth picture is interesting as a picture, but terrible as
a news photograph. The sixth picture is terrible as both. And someone who does not see the
first picture as, above all, barbaric, is missing something important, morally. And, though I am
embarrassed to add this, it is not a very good picture, either. The eighth picture is pretty,
but a terrible news picture.)

Second, McNally appears to be a typical leftwing journalist. She is unable to say anything
significant about the third picture, the famous World War II picture of the flag raising on Iwo
Jima, but she gushes over an entirely routine campaign picture of the Kerrys and Edwards. She
shows the usual bigotry toward rural areas in her Q&A, saying that the New York Times would not
consider hiring a photographer from a "podunk" newspaper. (Or Mark Twain, as a writer, by the
same criterion.) And she gushes over a woman committing suicide with the help of the Oregon
assisted suicide law. Sadly, there is nothing in either the captions or the Q&A to suggest
that she has an open mind — which is also, alas, typical of our leftwing journalists.

In recent years, I have been much impressed by the photos used by the New York Times. Now that
Ms. McNally is in charge of selecting them, I expect to be, more often, depressed by them.
But the executives at the New York Times need not worry. I am nearly certain that Ms. McNally
will never, ever do anything the least bit politically incorrect. And she does help fill at
least one quota.

(I looked, but found no explanation for this particular collection of pictures, which does not seem to
have a theme.)